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The rugged landscape of Baronia on Sardinia sets the scene for this novel of crime, guilt and retribution. This novel presents the story of the Pintor sisters - from a family of noble landowners now in decline - their nephew Giacinto, and their servant Efix, who is trying to make up for a mysterious sin committed many years before. Around, below, and inside them the raging Mediterranean storms, the jagged mountains, the murmuring forests, and the gushing springs form a Greek chorus of witness to the tragic drama of this unforgiving land. Deledda tells her story with her characteristic love of the natural landscape and fascination with the folk culture of the island, with details about the famous religious festivals held in mountain encampments and the lore of the "dark beings who populate the Sardinian night, the fairies who live in rocks and caves, and the sprites with seven red caps who bother sleep."

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Born in Nuoro, Sardinia, into a middle-class family, Deledda attended elementary school and then was educated by a private tutor (a guest of one of her relatives) and moved on to study literature on her own. She started writing at a very young age, inspired by the Sardinian peasants and their struggles.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."

In Deledda's novels there is always a strong connection between places and people, feelings and environment. The environment depicted is that one harsh of native Sardinia, but it is not depicted according to regional veristic schemes neither according to the otherworldly vision by D'Annunzio, but relived through the myth.